The Portland Bureau of Transportation has released a report card that shows it failed to meet maintenance goals half of the time in the previous fiscal year. The bureau has previously said it can't afford basics such as repaving bad roads.Motoya Nakamura/ The Oregonian

In
two days, the city auditor's office plans to release a review of the Transportation Bureau's spending under former Mayor Sam
Adams -- and if a recently released report card from the bureau itself
is any indication, that audit will include some tough critiques.

For
the third year in a row, the Transportation Bureau released last week a
review of how the bureau did in meeting various maintenance
goals for the previous fiscal year. All told, the bureau fell short of meeting its goals more than
half the time.

The
report card reviews 22 different categories, ranging from bridge and
pavement condition to streetlight and traffic signal condition, each
with its own target. It then notes whether the bureau met its
target, came within 80 percent of meeting its target or failed to meet
its target altogether.

Take
for instance, bridge condition. One category sets a standard for the "percent of bridges requiring critical and urgent maintenance." The
bureau's goal is to get that figure down to 5 percent. The report card
shows they hit 4 percent. For that metric, then, the bureau gets a
passing grade.

However
a different bridge goal -- that of having the "percent of bridges that
are weight restricted" at 5 percent -- was not met. In fact, 16 percent
are weight restricted.

According to the report card, the bureau appears to be meeting its goals in
general sidewalk condition, pavement markings, parking meeting condition and
tram and street car condition. On the flip side, the city is lagging
in providing ramps on street corners as well as general streetlight, traffic
signal, street sign and -- perhaps most notably -- pavement condition.

The
bureau's ability to maintain the city's streets under the previous
administration has been a topic of much criticism. Last February, The
Oregonian’s Beth Slovic reported that the Portland Transportation Bureau in 2012 announced that it would stop funding major road repaving projects until 2017. The bureau also had plans
to cut into services such as bridge monitoring, street cleaning and
sidewalk inspections.

Mayor
Charlie Hales seized on that news during his 2012 campaign and promised
voters that his administration would focus on getting the city back to
work on basic services.

The
report card's data, which was compiled over the last few months, is
current through June 30, 2012. This particular report card was not
shared with former Mayor Sam Adams, according to bureau spokeswoman Cheryl Kuck, though the
two previous reports were. They, too, showed the bureau meeting its
goals about half the time.

It's worth noting that producing
these report cards is no small task. "Pavement raters actually have to walk all 4,800 miles of
streets in the system to obtain a complete data set," Kuck said.

The
independent audit due out later this week won't look at the mechanics
of the city’s road system so much as the way the Transportation Bureau manages its
millions of dollars in discretionary spending.

According
to a report in Willamette Week, the audit will likely scold "the bureau
and City Council for committing to new capital projects … while not
setting aside enough money for basic road upkeep." Still, the specifics
of the audit won't be made public until Wednesday.*